an anthology of regrets (letting go is sometimes harder)
by silverxsnowflake
Summary: Dealing with Namie's suicide, and what comes after. izanamie, one sided shizaya. This story is complete.
1. falling star

falling star

 **summary:** maybe he's selfish for not missing her like everyone else in this wretched city (god, he hates all of this silence) and maybe he's a monster for being a little grateful for her death since with her out of the way maybe he can find happiness. but inside he knows that it is true. he will never be good. (

Shizuo Heiwajima is in love with Izaya Orihara.

Yes, he will admit it.

He fell in love with the raven-haired lad the moment that he laid eyes on him in high school.

But he does hate Izaya. He hates the flea.

He hates the way that he manipulates the people around him, and swears not to get close.

But he finds himself falling for him anyways.

 _"aww, shizu-chan" a small caress which is actually a mocking pat on the head "what could you possibly want with me, an innocent and unknowing informant?"_

Izaya is not innocent, for sure.

He sees the way that he acts around women.

 _"new here, miss...?"_

But at least Izaya is a constant in his life.

He is the thing that will never change, he thinks bittersweetly, still the same asshole as always.

And while Shizuo is trying to sort out his complicated feelings by simply smashing everything in sight, Izaya is busy being his same old self.

Damn the stupid rat, because that's what he's best out. Letting humans down.

He had thought that Izaya would eventually just end it with Namie, but to his surprise, he found that it went on for more than just a few days. Days became weeks, weeks became months.

And before he knew it he was even deeper in despair than he ever thought possible.

Before he knew it, he was intoxicated with grief at the fact that he'd never find his happy ending.

But more than anything he hates Yagari Seiji.

He's the dumb kid that started this whole thing.

Otherwise, Orihara Izaya might never have met Yagiri Namie, might have had a chance to share twilight evenings with Shizuo, might have had a chance to love him.

But for her, it might have happened.

 _shinra laughed. "are you guys enemies or just fighting lovers?" a blush rose to his cheeks, and he felt more embarrassed than ever he had thought possible. izaya hadn't noticed. of course not. he never noticed._

He knows that Izaya has it in him to be crueler than anything, to crush anyone's soul, to change the course of history through a single choice.

And if he knows Izaya, he knows that he won't be able to stop himself from such an interesting experiment. How humans experience heartbreak.

So admittedly, he knows (he'd like to believe he does, at least, that there might be a chance after all) that Namie will end up jilted, left to the police, and broken.

It might be cruel to wish that such a thing might happen, but he knows it will. He knows Izaya too well to think that he might actually settle down and be, well, normal for once.

So he waits, biding his time, for the inevitable to happen. He's just the same old annoying Shizu-chan for the long, lonely months until the big blowup. He stops seeking out Izaya for a while. Dates a girl. Breaks up with her because she finds out about his secrets. Chases away his demons with well-timed, expensive bottles of wine.

And he's spiraling deep down, deep down into a depression, and he doesn't know if he can pick himself up. His house is always clean, because he has nothing much else to do than drink, waste money, and live to the endless nightmare that he knows will end (but it doesn't seem to be anytime soon).

Kasuka stops by for a visit, noting the finally-clean house with concern.

 _"did something happen, shizuo?" he examines the living room in dismay, as he knows shizuo isn't the type to clean every day._

 _"no, nothing, of course." that's his cue to leave, or be thrown out._

He takes up, funny as it might sound, gardening.

It's a welcome distraction, surprisingly.

At first he plants normal flowers, the ones that his online course are telling him to.

But then he starts to get a little adventurous.

Side-by-side his first petunias are forget-me-nots, morning glories, and roses, all soft and beautiful hues. They flourish under his watchful eye.

It's strange how he's managed to create something lovely, something truly amazing, him, who destroys and fights and breaks. It's strange how he's settled down, how he's become docile and pleasant.

In this entire time, Izaya does not visit.

He slowly starts to forget the beautiful boy that he loved, forgets tender moments in their friendship, forgets where they used to fight, forgets how he used to throw vending machines.

He meets Tohko, and gradually he starts to fall in love with her.

 _"sorry, do you need something?" she's looking around the shop in childlike delight._

 _she takes his hand. "these are amazing!" she exclaims. "you're a true artist!"_

 _and he blushes, just like he did with izaya so long ago._

 _"i'm heiwajima shizuo."_

 _"i'm sakuragi tohko."_

He forgets about Izaya's strange quirks, how he had that weird chessboard in his room. He even forgets about how he called him Shizu-chan. He's forgotten more than he's remembered, and truthfully, at this point he doesn't care.

Tohko and he manage to create a new life together.

It's bliss.

It's happier than he ever thought he'd be.

He takes up religion, praying devotedly to God for his wife and how perfect everything seemed to be.

But it all comes crashing down.

The flea, true to his nature, ruins it all with a single phone call.

 _"shizu-chan," he hears coming from his voicemail._

 _things start flooding back to him._

 _oh god no, he thinks, and rushes to delete it._

 _"shizu-chan, namie's dead."_

 _all hell breaks loose in him. he stares at the phone, and then slumps down to the carpet, eyes wide._

 _tohko cannot comfort him. wine cannot comfort him. flowers cannot comfort him._

Because even if he thought that he was happy, he was always a sheep, blindly following Izaya's words.

Now he has a chance.

Now that Namie's dead.

He doesn't know what to do.

He could pursue Izaya, or stay with Tohko.

* * *

Tohko Heiwajima was starting to suspect her loving husband, Shizuo.

He would stay up at ungodly hours, staring at the will, trying to make a choice.

But between what?

"Honey," she called to him, "come down so I can give you a massage."

He affirms her with an absentminded "mmhmmm" and walks down the stairs mechanically.

Expertly squeezing his shoulders, she rested her head on his head.

"What is this all about?"

She thinks she detects a tear in his eyes.

"One of my friends is dead."

Oh, she tells herself, that's it. That's why he disappears with a suitcase full of his only black clothes and his black umbrella. He leaves her a note asking if she wants to go to the funeral.

She calls him back and says no. He sounds relieved.

When he comes home, she's already filed the papers.

"I can't do this anymore. You're not letting me in."

Numbly, he sits there and stares at her.

She stands up. This is not the first time she's left a man, and this will undoubtedly not be the last.

"Thank you for five years of happiness," she tells him before she leaves their house for good.

She knows she'll never truly find her happy ending. But maybe she can find snippets of it along the way.

* * *

The house is emptier than ever.

Izaya comes to visit.

Even after this many years, Izaya looks the same.

Shizuo's the one who has changed.

He's lost his glasses to contacts for Tohka.

He doesn't wear his bartender suit anymore.

He's quieter, with more restraint.

He's so different that Izaya is surprised.

"Shizu-chan!" he says loudly, coming in and ruffling his blonde hair. "How is my favorite vending machine throwing monster?"

Shizuo blushes, but looks at him quizzically. He can't quite recall the old days completely, so he's perplexed as to what vending-machine throwing monster means.

"Ah, I'll have to re-train you, I guess. I see you've got a garden now."

"Long time no see," he says quietly. "I had thought you moved away."

Izaya's grin gets even bigger. "Never! Move away? From my own city?"

"Why are you here," he mutters, going to the kitchen to fill up the teapot again.

"To reminisce with you, of course! We're both older and more mature, so we can finally be friends, obviously!"

It strikes him harder than he thought it would.

Just friends.

But then he smiles, and remembers back when there was no Izaya at all.

He'll take friends for now.

Thank you, Namie.

* * *

IZAYA:

He came to visit Shizuo after Namie's death, after years of separation.

With amusement, he noted that the blonde seemed to still have the same old, same old crush on him, despite everything else changing.

He's surprised that he's thrown away everything for him.

And he knows deep down that he won't replace Namie, he'll never replace Namie.

Sure, he'll be friends with Shizuo.

But they'll never be lovers.

They'll never be what Namie was to him.

They'll never be what Shizuo wants.

Smirking, he raises his teacup.

Namie's death has embittered him.

She was the only human who had pulled the wool over his eyes.

He needed to be more careful. He was more attached to this sinful world than he thought.

 **A/N: I don't own Durarara! or anything else of that nature. Sorry I haven't been as active (such understatements!) but I promise now that I have more time I will be able to write more.**


	2. innocent vision

innocent vision

 **summary:** all he really wanted was to be able to love everyone equally and to stop being such a human. but he was a human, just a glorified human, and her death brought him crashing down from the clouds. he can't take it anymore. he thought she cared (if she did she'd have hung on for him).

All he really ever wanted to do was to love humans.

Yes, he loved them all, no matter who.

But then he met Yagiri Namie.

 _"i don't care who you are, i'm not going to wear that type of thing."_

 _"how rude. i'm your boss."_

 _she stares at him without giving in. "i know you won't fire me."  
_

 _and he doesn't fire her._

He doesn't know why he didn't fire her the first time she was rude to him.

He had always been a petty person. He got tired of others very quickly, and threw them away. Like his sisters, for say.

They had come to the funeral, hadn't they?

They had come to the funeral and cried and looked at him with those large eyes, practically saying, "You never came to visit us all these years and here we are now."

He doesn't know how they heard.

For the first time since childhood, he finds himself breaking.

Right now, he's drowning in a pool of useless guilt, and Mairu and Kururi are tying bricks to his body to push him down even further.

They liked Namie, he remembered. Thought of her as the sibling that he wasn't.

(He'd like to believe that maybe Mairu and Kururi are demons like him and so he can excuse himself for not loving him.)

It doesn't work.

He breaks down and invites them over for the first time, not even exasperated enough to tell them don't muss up the blankets or ruin the chairs, and he doesn't have enough energy anyways, so it's all quite useless.

He flops down into his chair, and studies his chessboard.

He's brought it from his office, hoping he can concentrate on it here.

His eyes fly over the chessboard, expertly calculating his next move.

His phone rings. Wearily, he picks it up, hoping it isn't somebody sending their condolences along, or somebody who is pretending to care about what happened to Namie (he knows that she was loved, and he knows that he couldn't refuse her anything).

Twirling a strand of his hair, after some deliberation, he clicks the answer button.

A voice comes out of the phone, louder than even Shizu-chan, that beast, and startles him, snapping him out of his daze for a little.

"WHERE IS MY SISTER?"

It's Seiji. The worst brother in the history of the world. Potentially even worse than Izaya (that is probably actually true.)

"In an expensive carved marble coffin under the earth, covered with flowers."

"..."

There is silence on the other end as Seiji takes this in.

But then, his anger comes back twofold.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME, YOU DAMN-"

That's it. For some reason, he has an urge to do what he hasn't done in a long time: break a human's spirit.

"The whole city knew about it, Yagiri-kun. Everyone was mourning your sister and buying her flowers and visiting her grave to pray that she would go to heaven. How would you not know?"

There was another pause.

"Maybe it's because...oh, you weren't in the city! You weren't there when the sister you only caused grief and trouble for died, you weren't there when they lowered her into the ground, you weren't there when she got married, or for any of her birthdays. Maybe it's because you hated her. Isn't that true, Yagiri-kun? And now that she's dead you don't even care, do you? You're a sickening person."

There. He's done it. He's sure that this has broken Seiji's spirit.

(but he knows that Seiji does deserve it, the rat).

"Stay out of this city, Yagiri-kun. If you ever return, then I will find you, and you will finally get what you deserve."

That's more sadistic than he's been in a while.

It frightens and enamors him.

He buries his head in his hands. He doesn't understand.

He doesn't understand why.

Deep down in him he had wanted to end things with Namie, to see what it would be like for a human to experience that kind of heartbreak.

But he hadn't been able to.

 _her eyes fluttered open. she had slept on his lap again._

 _"izaya, how long have i been sleeping?"_

 _he mockingly runs his slender, white fingers through her hair, and smooths it out._

 _"long enough for me to dock your pay."_

 _she sighed, and curled up closer to him._

 _she didn't know why she always woke up cold._

 _but at least there was a fluffy person in front of her._

The day he plans on finally ending things is the day that he finds a corpse in the bathtub.

She probably knew what he was going to do.

 _"you're quieter than usual today."_

 _she could always read him fairly well._

 _he smiles at her dazzlingly._

 _"just contemplating a question," he says lazily, and stretches, before passing his mug to her so she can make him coffee._

Scratch that, she knew what he was going to do.

He flashes back to the smile she gave him before leaving the office.

It still haunts him, that smile. It's a wan, tired smile, a goodbye smile. A smile that tells him that this is the end for him.

Maybe he's reading too much into her actions.

Maybe he's just tired of being so tired he falls asleep, then jolts awake screaming.

She might not live on this world anymore, but she still lives in his nightmares.

 _she gently grasps his arm._

 _"you've been a bad boy, haven't you?"_

 _the torture begins._

 _he watches her, paralyzed, happy._

 _he's paralyzed._

 _he wishes he could be happy too._

 _but he can't._

 _he can't because he ruined it._

 _he's never been one to build._

 _always the destroyer._

 _she dances away through the gloom of his tortured mind, cloaked in a gown of white._

 _he wishes he could be happy._

 _he wishes he could be happy._

She got to him before he could. She ended things before he did.

But she ended them in the most abrupt way possible, the only one that could bring him to tears.

He's alone right now.

Oh, he's still an informant, but he's lost his passion. He's docile now. He's stopped betraying people, except for here and there.

He's stopped watching humans.

 _there is a trail of blood in the bathroom._

 _she's in his bathtub._

 _she is cold._

 _she is colder than he thought possible._

 _the bathtub is filled with water - and blood._

 _there is a cut on her neck._

 _he doesn't know what to do._

 _he's far past the point when he could still cry._

 _he takes her out of the bathtub and drains it._

 _he gently wipes down her corpse, all the while hyperventilating._

 _he doesn't know what to do._

 _so he falls asleep, clutching her dead body._

 _shinra finds him in the morning, angelic face wracked with fear, head resting on namie's naked chest._

 _shinra sees the wound, and cries too._

 _he cries because he knows what this will mean for izaya._

 _he cries because he knows that it wasn't her fault, and this is yet another death that the informant has caused._

Shinra passes by the apartment to talk to Izaya.

"Izaya...?"

He tentatively knocks on the door.

Izaya answers.

Shinra is shocked. He's pale, the color of clean snow, and he's dressed in all black. But he isn't wearing his fur jacket.

"Where's your jacket?" he inquires.

Izaya smiles, a large and genuine grin, and closes his eyes.

Is he ready to let go?

 _"the last stage of grief is acceptance."_

 _he smiles. "how do you know? were you grieving the loss of seiji?"_

 _"shut up. it's not that."_

Yes, he is ready.

He smiles again, and laughs.

Tears come out of his eyes, for the first time in so many years.

He's crying. He's crying for Namie.

"I left in on her grave," he says.

This doesn't surprise Shinra.

"I wanted her to know that I was there with her until death."

He knows that it was a mistake to ever try to end things with her.

But the only thing he can do at this point is accept his mistakes.

* * *

"I'm quitting my job as an informant."

He's at a little bakery with Celty and Shinra.

"Why?" Shinra questions, prodding his egg custard and watching Celty.

Celty is interested, and leans forward.

"Why?" she asks, watching Izaya.

"I've only ever truly loved Namie, haven't I?

The conversation is finally heading to where it was going to go. This does not surprise Shinra, just like their conversation years ago when Namie first died.

"And so..."

He closes his eyes, and accepts his decision.

He knows where to begin. He starts to say something, but then changes his mind.

"Did you know I've stopped watching humans?"

This finally surprises Shinra. Humans, their behavior, and their general activities were Izaya's life.

"You see, I feel like I was being hypocritical."

The wind chimes on the door dance in the breeze outside, and the clerk wipes down a counter. All before Izaya finally admits it.

"I've become human."

 **A/N: Yay, right? I don't own Durarara! Leave story ideas in the comments, I guess.**


	3. sorry just made this one up no relation

She must finish some things before her end (she can feel the voice in her head, telling her to do it _now_ ) but she can't quite bring herself to.

Besides, she knows that Izaya is away on a business trip, so she will be alone in the apartment for god knows how long.

(she knows of his infidelity, of course, it's not a big secret. she also knows that his previous brides all committed suicide)

Her fingers wrap gently around the cold metal handle of the gun. She likes the feel of it in her hand. It fits perfectly.

Underneath, she knows that Izaya is still a human; despite his strength and speed, he will still react the same to a bullet in his heart.

(out of her studies, 2 out of 10 men in this disgusting, forsaken city have covert relationships with the girls who go to the local high school)

Maybe she knows she's always been the best, maybe she knows that nobody could ever beat her.

(it's time now to tie up loose ends with seiji. this is the part she was dreading)

She takes a deep breath, and sets her mind to it. She takes out her new phone, and slowly, painstakingly dials his number.

She waits as it rings, waits for him to pick up.

He does so.

"Hello?"

His voice, so infuriatingly cheerful, so beautiful to her when she was younger and naive, is now like the dull drone of everybody else.

Another few years of her life wasted on such a terrible person. She didn't have very good judgment, did she?

"Seiji. It's me."

He takes a few seconds to grasp that it is Namie, his sister.

"Hey. What's up?"

Behind the casual facade, she hears a bit of panic. She does know about his theft of the head from her laboratory, and all of the other crimes he's committed. She could bring his entire life crashing down.

"I hate you. You're a selfish jerk."

She hangs up on him before he can respond, and instead of feeling satisfaction, just feels hollow inside. The emptiness of her heart is like how her chest used to ache when she wished for Seiji.

(killing him is out of the question, but she _will_ give him what he deserves in her will. those whose sins she is not willing to forgive will not live)

She looks at her calendar, paisley, light pink and spring green. In her delicate handwriting, today she's marked, "my birthday."

Izaya reads her calendar, so she could hardly have written what she really wanted to.

She leaves a note for him on the calendar.

Then, she goes into the kitchen, and starts making coffee.

Absentmindedly, she spills the granules onto the floor. The area around her is gritty. Reaching for the broom leaning against the wall, she sweeps it all up.

Sometimes she's tired of being the housewife. Sometimes she wishes that she could go out and work again.

They have a daughter. Kimiko is the light of her world now, but she's not yet three years old. She's incredibly intelligent. At the moment she's at a friend's house down the street, playing. It makes her feel so small, inside the large house.

(she suspects she'd feel as lonely, perhaps even lonelier, if she had more children, but after one girl she put her foot down)

They've been married for three years now. The garden is still immaculate. She still goes to all the tea parties hosted by the neighbors, and plans her own in return.

The refrigerator is stocked with food that she's made, and fresh vegetables. The kitchen is immaculate, in a soft blue color. Satiny cream curtains hang against the window, blocking the street from view.

Sighing, she sits down at the glass kitchen table, and stares at her hands.

They're pale, and soft, since she takes rather good care of them. But they still look old and tired, just like she is right now.

The world around her continues moving, even if she decides to do it.

They don't care about her.

Not anybody.

She's all alone in the world.

They'll get a divorce soon, if she stays, no doubt.

That would be a disgrace to her family. She doubts that his would even care.

Maybe somewhere inside of her she does wish for Izaya's love, which is being given to that young girl he's with right now.

She's even from that local high school she mentioned earlier.

She's not nearly as pretty as Namie is, but she's something else, and that's what he cares about.

Nobody, really, has ever overshadowed Namie. It's just not done.

Well, it is now.

She walks over to the couch mechanically, and collapses.

That's when the tears start.

She darts glances around the living room through her tears, and thinks maybe she didn't do that badly for those three years that she suffered, in a house without a husband who ever came home.

Maybe she's raised Kimiko well.

Because behind her mask, she really does care about her daughter.

She cares about her more than Izaya, to be honest.

She must do it now.

She must.

Kimiko will come home soon.

She changes into her bathing suit in her bedroom hastily. It hardly matters, but she picks the white and gold two-piece.

Fashion won't be a key piece when her dead body is lowered into the ground.

She'll drown herself, so she doesn't make the neighbors talk.

About a wife who Izaya made so unhappy, who he was so unfaithful to, she killed herself.

Yes, she'll drown herself.

She walks down to the pool, and slowly submerges herself.

She forces herself to stay under water, despite the natural instinct to go back up for air.

She's getting light-headed.

It's hard to see now.

Finally, the world fades into darkness, and Orihara Namie is no longer.

* * *

Orihara Izaya knows that he is a sinner.

He knows that what he did to Namie is totally wrong.

He knows that no matter what he does he'll probably never make it right.

He knows that he and his wife have driven off Kimiko.

He knows that she won't love him.

He knows that after the first year of marriage, the only reason he sought her out was because he was bored of Namie one week.

He knows he should've been able to end things.

But he couldn't.

He couldn't because he knows that he is a demon, the very definition of despicable. He couldn't because he sees the way that Shinra and Celty and even Shizuo look at him after they lower Namie into the ground. They look at him like he will never be loved, and that they regret loving him in the first place. Shinra's look is the worst, though. He's always known that Izaya was like this.

He just didn't think that he'd be terrible enough to let his desires kill.

Shinra doesn't talk to him in more than ten years.

Neither does Celty.

Neither does Shizuo.

Neither does Mikado.

Neither does Masaomi.

Neither does anybody that he's ever met, really.

Mairu and Kururi do not come to his house ever again to greet their brother.

Instead, they become newscasters.

They're very popular.

They refuse to use his name, only calling him the most vile and offensive things they can think of.

(he hates all of the hate that he gets from his precious humans)

(most of all he hates how even Kimiko hates him, his daughter)

* * *

Kimiko does well in school.

But she hates her father, hates him so much that she gets angry even being in the same room as him.

She drove her mother to kill herself.

The neighbors have all forgiven him, saying it was Namie's own fault, that she was an unstable maniac.

She vows that somebody, she will make him pay for her sins.

She vows that his new bride will pay as well.

(she's even younger than Mama, and a lot less intelligent)

She grows up to look like the spitting image of Namie.

As soon as she can, she moves out.

She moves far away, and never comes back once.

Except for the day her father is shot and killed at an important meeting.

She attends his funeral, clad in a black dress with a matching lacy umbrella (it was her mother's)

The preacher says the words.

She smiles under her veil.

Two days later, snow falls on the tombstone of Orihara Izaya.

Next to all the flowers is a lacy umbrella.

If one looked close enough, the sharp part had dried blood on it.


End file.
